Vintage Pantry Canisters

Glass jars large enough to hold whatever you want to put in them (in my project, a large jar for sugar, a small jar for salt)

Spray paint, your choice of color

Glass knob with screw (mine came in the package with the knob

Washers to fit the screw

I recently found the cutest free download for pantry labels (bless you, whoever did all of this lovely work and shared it with the rest of us who could never do this by ourselves!) and because I have an old-fashioned pantry, it seemed only fitting that I should work on making my canisters nice using these lovely labels. I have these old 80s canisters that, although they served their purpose, aren’t really much to look at. Anyway, the instructions on the download had rather complicated instructions about how to fix laser ink to a clear label, and as I lay awake at night pondering this, I remembered my old friend–laminating sheets–which I still had plenty of in my office. But how to make the ink permanent? Another laminating sheet right on top of the printing, of course.

Oh, I made that sound so easy, didn’t I! The truth is, this required several tries (and a few completely wasted laminating sheets) to get one sheet reasonably straight on top of the other. Laminating sheets, as it turns out, can be very unforgiving. So here’s what the labels look like printed out and with another clear sheet of laminating plastic over the labels.

Next, I took some old jars–one very old, one contemporary, washed them and dried them well, and took the tops off.

I drilled a hole right through the middle of each lid using a standard drill bit.

Then I spray painted the lids in a to-die-for shade of blue. This lid color will be the consistent feature of my new canister set. This Valspar product is a paint and primer all in one, and went on very easily.

When the lids were dry, I put a washer on the screw, then threaded the screw through the hole of the lid…

…then twisted the knob onto the screw.

Next I cut out and applied my label. Kind of sloppily, but you can do better, I’m sure.